54 real1y knows how much of it could or should be made available for redis- tributIon A land inventory is now being conducted by the state and is be- ing monitored by the newly created Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which was established in 1978 by a state con- stitutional convention to take charge of programs for assisting native Hawaiians to secure their rights, in the form of reparations or in other re- spects. An election was held in N ovem- ber, 1980, for nine trustees of O.H.A. Citizens with any Hawaiian blood were aHowed to vote, and they had to establish their credentials simply by their own testimony. About eighty-five thousand people were estimated to be eligible. Of these, fifty-four thousand registered to vote, and almost forty- three thousand cast ballots (for a hundred and thirty-six candidates ), which was considered a good turnout. Last year, O.H.A. held meetings on five of the major islands to hear the grievances of the Hawaiians. Adelaide (Frenchy) DeSoto, a big, bustling, hard-driving woman, half Hawaiian and half German, who directed O.H.A. until recently, when she re- signed to run for the state legislature, says that the organization is supposed to obtain twenty per cent of the income from ceded land, an amount antici- pated to be a million and a quarter dollars a year, to finance its programs, including economic development of the land for the benefit of the Hawai- ian people. Some of them, most of the activists included, told me that they look upon O.H.A. as just another state-dominated body that won't ac- complish anything, but others, like Mrs. DeSoto, feel that it represents the best chance the Hawaiians have had so far to make themselves heard. Mrs. DeSoto feels that Hawaiians can ob- tain political clout either directly through O.H.A. or through the state's four county councils and the legisla- ture. (Today, the legislature has only about a dozen members with as much as half Hawaiian blood, out of a total of seventy-six; it has for several de- cades been led by people of Japanese ancestry. ) "I'm not looking for reparations, only justice," Mrs. DeSoto said when I spoke with her . "We have to clarify the laws that concern land use, and see that they're applied fairly to everyone -not just to the rich and the power- fuL The poor will never achieve equality, but we have to keep up our advocacy of the best interests of the Hawaiians Part of our mandate is to assist and supervise the work of all organizations that represent the com- mon people of Hawaiian blood, which is why we've been holding hearings to get their manao, or feelings-to take their pulse. Sure, we're part of the existing structure, and we need legis- lative support, but if O.H.A. can es- tablish its credentials we'll be O.K. There has been a lot of land grabbing, and some of what we find out through our inventory and title searches is likely to end up in the courts. I proba- bly won't live to see the benefits, but I'll die knowing that my kids will have a better chance. This isn't just a racial thing. Racial tensions have ex- isted here for a long time, but the problem is primarily economic." Among those who regard O.H.A. skeptically is Haunani-Kay Trask, a young part-Hawaiian woman I met, who is a college instructor in Ameri- can studies and has been active on behalf of a number of nationalist causes. She says she doubts "the ability of any umbrella organization to repre- sent different Hawaiian communities which are at varied levels of socioeco- nomic and political development." She raises the question of "why power should be vested in nine individuals rather than in the communities them- selves," and maintains that it is likely that O.H.A. "will exacerbate rather than quell Hawaiian discontent by raising false, because impossible, hopes." The major concerns of the Hawaiians, she believes, are still the alienation of their land and the con- comitant decline in Hawaiian culture. Both of these have been most clearly demonstrated, she says, "in the area of resort and commercial development, which, apart from the income derived from the American military presence, has made Hawaii's economy almost wholly dependent on tourism," for it has resulted in "a smashing of the , )I" Ý. -1,-': . II j' .:. Ii; \ t< II .. "., * ,., J - ,I fI ' I A I " I)! 1.1 ' \ ....."'. t ..r , tit .. ' \ pi :, \ \';1 " r ,,(,v" JI'" i ' I ' a \ f' rt! ; . r /I " \ I ... " , 1t'.J If. I ' ." f I. U í /A, . A I I. rk;"'''' "1' ,., .. .,. , / fj, . ., \ I J ..... \t '\ .., \' ,Ia \ :'1< '" . '... , ,. ;:. t (. m 1 (/t. . " 'I , ' jf f , f . _ rl . 1j Jïff/ .()l!f;1 it · IJ -'Is- . It/: ,'l. ilJl:>i.. fJlt:' l i -'" ilfl U<'t-/'// . ..- . . -J/ ili\ '.1 ,-, '" g-; ". r/; /' -.. ,r:;,' 1W . .. . . -'- { l 'r . -. ,r Y "".' . ?- - _...:' ,""- -:.,.- :. '/À < 4y t. j,--. ,.-:.: " .-J .,./ :! Tù.un 4A. t .. (f Þ; . 'i j\ \.\!i&! "\ ( ,\ \ ; :\t',' '. I \"! 1,\ t ' I '\ 1\ I, 1 " ! , I ' SEPTEMBER. 6, 1982 community and the ohana; a severing of the intimate relationship between the aina-the land-and the people." Miss Trask asks, "If land develop- ment is a serious root cause of native- Hawaiian problems, can the Office of Hawaiian Affairs do anything con- crete to curb or stop land development? For example, can O.H.A. pass any laws, buy any lands, or demand privi- leged treatment through negotiations or other avenues to prevent aliena- tion of the land?" Mrs. DeSoto and the other O.H.A. trustees believe it can, but Miss Trask points out that O.H.A. has no jurisdiction over the zoning commissions, the city councils, or the state legislature, which together control land development. It will not, she says, be able to stop "the large infusions of money by local and outside corporations [ that] are enormously effective in breaking down resistance to development" on the part of the state and local governments. H A W AIl'S present congressional delegation consists of two Dem- ocratic senators and two Democrat- ic members of the House-one of the four being part-Hawaiian, one haole, and two of Japanese ancestry. Together, led by Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a Japanese-American who fought, and lost an arm, during the Second World War, and who has served in Congress for twenty- three years, as a representative and as a senator, they have pressed for a number of measures, the most signif- icant of which is the creation of a Native Hawaiians Study Commission "to conduct a study of the culture, needs, and concerns of the Native Hawaiians." The nine-member com- mission was finally set up in 1980, after five years of effort, and though the language of the bill does not spe- cifically call for outright recognition of Hawaiian claims or of the right to reparations (the House objected to this), Senator Inouye regards its two- year mandate as designed "to establish for the record that the Hawaiians are native American people who have been treated unfairly by the American gov- ernment." President Carter signed the enabling bill shortly before he left of- fice, and appointed the nine members, including three islanders, who were to serve at a hundred dollars a day plus expenses. When President Reagan came into office, he fired the nine members, and there were reports that he considered the commission a boon- doggle. However, he shortly reconsti-